Editorial: Watery Wild West -- Feds need to step up patrol of California coast to combat influx of drugs and migrants

Security may be tighter along California's land border with Mexico, but there's a gaping hole in the form of a vast coastline that offers free passage to panga boats carrying either migrants or illegal drugs. It's a watery Wild West, as recent events have underscored.

The federal government must deploy additional manpower and resources to combat a growing illegal trade that has become increasingly dangerous, as evidenced by the death of a U.S. Coast Guard officer earlier this month.

At first glance, panga boats don't look very menacing. The 20-foot, open-hull vessels with a single outboard engine are basically a motorized dinghy. But the small fishing boats -- typically found in Mexico and Central America -- are the latest tool used by brazen traffickers attempting to smuggle illicit narcotics and undocumented immigrants into the United States.

Panga passengers usually surrender if they are nabbed by authorities. But it wasn't a typical case on Dec. 2, when suspects aboard one of the small vessels aggressively rammed into an inflatable raft carrying four Coast Guard investigators near Santa Cruz Island. Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III of Redondo Beach suffered a fatal head wound when he and another man were thrown into the ocean.

The latest round of arrests were reported Monday, when authorities discovered 25 migrants crammed aboard a small panga boat floating off the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes.

Smugglers often put profit over safety when ferrying migrants aboard the panga boats. Sea conditions and weather are not usually taken into consideration, floatation devices are not usually provided and the small vessels are usually guided by hand-held GPS unit, making for a risky and unpredictable voyage, CBP officials said.

Coast Guard officials said they have not changed operations since Horne's death, saying a knee-jerk reaction would be a dishonor to Horne's memory. OK, but for how long? There must be some sort of response to the increasing number of pangas making their way up to the rocky coastline of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Orange County and as far north as San Luis Obispo.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have already logged 44 panga boat seizures between the Mexican border and San Luis Obispo County over the past seven weeks, netting 135 arrests and more than 20,000 pounds of marijuana.

More than 200 pangas carrying migrants and drugs were seized during the fiscal year that ended Oct. 1, a significant jump from only 33 such incidents reported in 2008, according to the CBP.

There's no question that authorities are doing a great job in arresting smugglers once their panga boats approach land, thanks to smooth coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. But, it's alarming to consider that traffickers are able to travel completely undetected while headed north.

Land borders may be more secure, but the federal government needs to double its efforts at sea before smugglers figure out how to successfully slip illegal drugs or undocumented immigrants onto California's coastline -- or worse yet, kill another officer during a hostile confrontation.